Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1978.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2006. / Advisor: Ronald L. Mullis, Florida State University, College of Human Sciences, Dept. of Family and Child Sciences. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Dec. 1, 2006). Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 87 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

The primary objective of this thesis is to queerly analyze the Planning 10 curriculum of British Columbia, Canada. ‘Queer’ in this case means the destabilization of identities that are traditionally understood in terms of binaries, and normalized through discourse. The lead research question is: how British Columbia’s Planning 10 curriculum (specifically it’s health component) might serve to reinforce and naturalize heterosexuality in its students and by extension in society by utilizing a combination of both Queer and curriculum theories. By using such an analytical framework, this thesis seeks to provide a multi-theoretical analysis of how sex, sexuality and gender identities are maintained and reinforced by the sex education curriculum in BC, and as such, normalized. This work will complement the recent move within curriculum studies from a modernist, or ‘black box’ understanding of curriculum, with a general focus on goals and objectives, towards a post-modernist and hopefully queer(er) understanding. Through both semi-structured interviews with in-service Planning 10 teachers (and one external educator specializing in sex education), and document analysis of the Planning 10 Integrated Resource Package (last revised in 2007), this research will uncovered queer potential within the curriculum, as well as those discursive constraints that might limit challenge to the heteronormative order. This thesis found that although there is the potential to include queer concepts through silence towards identities within the curriculum, because sex education is not a “teachable subject” in teacher education and a lack of professional development opportunities, teachers are left feeling unqualified, underqualified, and generally uncomfortable with the subject matter. More over, the curriculum document provides an “Alternative Delivery Clause” that pushes sex education into the realm of “sensitive subject matter”. This discomfort is further perpetuated by a number of binaries that remain rigid due to heteronormative discourse and other major narratives, while sex education exists in a grey area between private/public, child/adult, school/home, and state/family. / Graduate

Individuals with an intellectual or developmental disability (ID/DD) may not have had the experiences to develop social skills for long term relationships. While society has denied the sexuality of these individuals, the individuals have identified their desire for intimate relationships. The purpose of this study was a qualitative inquiry to identify what individuals with ID/DD expect from a sex education program. A small sample size of three participants identified three themes. Data emerged for the future focus of sex education programs to include: friendship, relationships, and safe sex behaviors. The study also revealed methods of education to be used for the program setting. While the generalizability of the study is limited, due to the small number of participants, data from this study can be used for future inquires aimed at the identification of meaningful sex education programs for individuals with ID/DD.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Education in fulfilment or partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education (Educational Psychology) and Special Education at the University of Zululand, 2002. / The current investigation consisted of three aims. The first aim was to determine the nature of secondary school learners* attitudes towards sex education. The second aim was to determine the learners' attitudes towards sex education in relation to information given by parents, teachers, peers and other media. The third aim was to determine the extent to which the following variables: gender, age. grade and residence influence the attitudes of learners towards sex education. A questionnaire was administered to a group of learners between ages of 13 years and below, up to 24 years and above. About fifty-five percent of learners were favourably disposed towards sex education. The results indicated that learners" attitudes are influenced by variables like gender, age, grade and residence.

Empirical investigations have identified hundreds of factors that predict whether youth engage in sexual activity (YSA). To promote optimal health and the avoidance of unhealthy or problematic outcomes that can result from YSA, sex education programs have been extensively developed and evaluated. Many evaluations have identified the effect of the program on immediate outcomes such as attitudes and intentions, others have examined subsequent behavioral and health outcomes, and some have done both. The purpose of this study was to extend the evaluation literature by testing a mediated effects model. A sex education program was found to have significant immediate effects on several attitudinal factors that have been shown to predict YSA, and was shown to significantly reduce the incidence of sexual activity approximately one year after the program (OR = 0.534, p = .004). A mediating effects test showed that youth’s stated intentions to engage in sexual activity was a significant mediated effect (B = -0.182, Lower CI = -0.291, Upper CI = -0.073), suggesting that the program effects on sexual activity occurred through the immediate effect on intentions, which in turn was likely affected by program content, which changed other attitudinal factors such as values, efficacy, and knowledge. Using immediate changes on these mediating factors to predict the likelihood of YSA showed that accurate prediction was possible, with an overall prediction accuracy rate of 74%. It was easier to predict who was not going to engage in YSA (94% accuracy) than who would (35% accuracy). Further predictive analyses showed that a score of 4.12 (on a scale of 1 to 5) on agreement with the items comprising the mediating factors’ scales was a threshold point, with the likelihood of engaging in YSA rising sharply as a function of this score until that point, and score increases above that point resulting in minimal changes in the probability of YSA. The results of this study demonstrate that it is possible to reduce YSA, that intent to engage in YSA was a primary mediator, and that accurate prediction of eventual behavioral results is possible, based on analysis of immediate results.

School-based sexuality education (SBSE) is an important and debated part of the sexual socialization of young people in the US. While existing literature addresses the sociological implications of SBSE at the policy and curriculum-level, little was previously known about the ways instructors carried out and made sense of sex education in their classrooms. In this study, I examine the relationship between how sex education instructors make sense of sex education and their understandings of youth and sexuality. I conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with sex education teachers in Mississippi public schools and used an inductive analysis approach to determine themes from the data. I find that teachers depart from the prescribed curriculum, or go off-script, to address their functional and ideological concerns in the classroom. Where teachers translate their own ideologies about youth and sexuality into instruction, these ideologies serve to reproduce social inequality by gendering, racializing, and classing instruction.

This dissertation argues that mid-century liberalism provided the philosophical rational and basis for sex education, and that sex education was cumulatively institutionalized as part of Ontario public schooling between 1955 and 1988 as the result of incremental, technocratic policy-making. School-based sex education – an extension of the welfare state – was a technocratic solution to socio-sexual problems such as venereal disease and teenage pregnancy. Sex education was conceptualized as a program of disease prevention and health promotion with the added objective of promoting sexual responsibility amongst students. While school-based sex education was ostensibly a form of sexual regulation, it also conformed to the purpose of liberal education: the development of the critical autonomous capacity of each and every individual student. The sex education that students received, therefore, was a medico-scientific study of sex that stressed prevention and early treatment, but which also emphasized the centrality of individual choice in place of the imperatives of a single standard of behaviour or morality. Sex education policy was shaped by a succession of incremental changes to better remedy both longstanding and emerging socio-sexual problems. When AIDS education was mandated for the 1987–88 school year in response to the AIDS crisis, sex education was further institutionalized. This decision, however, was only reached as a result of the past three decades worth of technocratic policy-making. Social scientific studies had provided evidence, albeit limited, of sex education’s effectiveness in ameliorating socio-sexual problems and reducing government spending. Moreover, empirical evidence indicated that most Ontarians were accepting of sex education – or at worst apathetic about it. While mandating AIDS education was the result of a catalyst, it did not represent a major shift in sex education policy when looked at over the longue durée. AIDS education was largely built upon established policy. By 1988, many aspects of contemporary sex education policy had been established. Ultimately, the ministry’s sex education policy reflected its burgeoning technocratic liberalism amidst an increasingly secular, pluralistic, and sexually permissive society. As a result of incremental, technocratic policy-making between 1955 and 1988, sex education – under conditions of liberal modernity – was institutionalized as part of Ontario public schooling. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

There has been little scientific evidence to suggest that abstinence-only-until-marriage education programs are effective in preventing or reducing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. There is also little scientific evidence to suggest that comprehensive sex education programs are as or more effective in preventing or reducing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease than their abstinence-only counterpart. The following study compares the teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease rates among minors in Virginia that participate in abstinence-only programs with rates among minors participating in comprehensive sex education programs. I hypothesize that counties implementing comprehensive sex education programs in schools will typically have lower pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease rates among minors than counties implementing abstinence-only education programs. I test these hypotheses with data on the 16 Virginia counties and county equivalents which could be verified as having either comprehensive or abstinence-only sex education programs in public schools during 1998-2003. The data confirm the hypotheses. On average, comprehensive program counties showed greater declines in pregnancy rates among females aged 15-17 than abstinence-only program counties. Comprehensive counties experienced declines in Chlamydia and Gonorrhea rates among males and females aged 15-17, whereas abstinence-only counties' Gonorrhea and Chlamydia rates increased. These findings underscore the need for statewide -- indeed, nationwide -- public reporting of school systems' sex education program types to permit a more thorough comparison and evaluation of program outcomes. In the meantime, these results challenge Virginia advocates of abstinence-only education programs to empirically defend their claims. / Master of Science